Papa Bear

October 25, 2004
Halas was the longtime owner of the Chicago Bears and one of the driving forces behind the creation and growth of the NFL. He was an innovator both on and off the field, and his influence can still be felt in professional football, even 21 years after his death. While many football fans are familiar with the story about how Halas and some associates founded the league in 1920 in a Canton, Ohio, automobile dealership, far fewer are aware of the growing pains the NFL endured in its early years. In his laudatory look at Halas, Davis, a Chicago journalist, provides plenty of little-known details about the formative days of both the NFL and the Bears, offering profiles of players and explanations of Halas's coaching style and business strategy. His in-depth reporting, however, is the biography's strength and weakness. Bear fans who can't get enough of the early history of the team will revel in the many game accounts, but more casual fans may find the narrative slowed by such details, particularly in the book's final portion, where Davis extends the story of the Bears to 2003 and expresses his skepticism about the team's current owners. Agent, Paul Bresnick.

November 15, 2004
Halas was, of course, one of the legendary founders of the National Football League and the longtime owner and successful coach of the Chicago Bears football franchise. There has been a great need for a new full-scale biography of Halas to update George Vass's still very serviceable George Halas and the Chicago Bears (1971) and Halas's own entertaining and colorful autobiography Halas by Halas (1979). Davis, longtime Chicago area journalist and sports producer, provides a welcome assessment that combines analysis and anecdote. "Papa Bear," as Davis notes, was less of a cuddly bear than a formidable and frugal (especially when negotiating player salaries) figure with uncanny and brilliant skills as a businessman and sportsman. There will be many more biographies of Halas in the future, but Davis's will remain a standard if only for its many interviews (some 60 in all). Because Halas cast a shadow well beyond Chicago, this work is recommended for most libraries.-Paul Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2004
Halas founded the Chicago Bears " and "the National Football League. Davis, a Chicago television producer, interviewed more than 60 former players, coaches, friends, and family as part of his research on one of the most towering but least understood figures in modern sports history. Halas was penurious to a fault yet could be remarkably generous, too. When Brian Piccolo succumbed to cancer in his playing prime, Halas volunteered to pay for the Piccolo children's education. But when he felt betrayed by George Allen, an assistant coach who tried to leave for a head coaching job without Halas' permission, Halas took Allen to court to prove a point. A biography of Halas is also a history of the Bears, and although Davis doesn't bog his account down with endless play-by-play game accounts, he does highlight the big moments in Halas' career as coach and owner. Davis offers the best and worst of Halas, but more significantly, he examines why he was the man he was, from his hardscrabble upbringing to his struggles with achieving solvency for the Bears and the NFL. This is clearly the definitive biography of a legendary American sports figure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)